Tracks and tires: Father & son restore Caterpillar crawlers

When it comes to classic tractor restoration, Tim Rees, who lives near Omaha, Nebraska, knows one thing for certain: Caterpillar crawlers are a lot harder to restore than John Deere tractors. Each of the four Cat Sixty models in his collection weigh about 19,000 pounds. In contrast, the John Deere 4020 he and his son, D.J. (David), restored weighs less than half of that, and their John Deere 530weighs even less.

The need for bigger jacks, a tractor with a loader, and a skid-steer to move components hasn’t dampened Rees’ passion for Cat crawlers, though. Before retiring last year, he spent almost 48 years working at the corporate office for NMC, the Caterpillar dealer for Nebraska, based in Omaha. However, Rees says he had a fascination for Cat machines even before that, thanks to his grandfather and his mother.

Riding a Cat with his grandfather

“When I was a kid growing up near Carroll, Nebraska, my grandfather drove a Cat motor grader, and once a week, he’d grade the road in front of our house,” he recalls. “I’d hear him coming long before he got there, so I’d run to the end of our driveway to meet him, and he’d let me ride with him to the corner and back.”

Rees’ passion for vintage Cat tractors only increased after he went to work for MVM (Missouri Valley Machinery, as it was called then). “The company had an old Cat Model Sixty that had been restored that they used in parades,” he adds. “I loved that tractor, but couldn’t afford one at the time.”

Four Cat Sixty tractors

Today, Rees owns not one, but four Cat Sixty tractors. However, the first tractor he restored was a Caterpillar Twenty that he bought from a gentleman in Nebraska. It had previously belonged to the seller’s grandfather, who lived near Missouri Valley, Iowa. The story was that the grandfather used the tractor only to plow the river bottom after the fields were flooded by the river in the spring.

On a little smaller scale, Rees has a Cat Ten high-crop tractor that had been owned by a farmer who also collected. The machine is equipped with three-row cultivator brackets and a mechanical lift. Unfortunately, Rees was never able to find a cultivator to fit it.

“The Ten was supposedly built to compete against the John Deere GP model, which was popular at the time,” Rees explains. “However, there were only 380 high-crop models built. I actually restored two of them, but I sold the other one to a collector in the Netherlands and kept this one. Over the years, I’ve sold several that I’ve restored so I can afford to fund the next one.”

Cat Snow Special Sixty

One of those “next ones” is perhaps the most unusual of all. It’s a 1928 Cat Snow Special Sixty with a wooden cab that Rees acquired in Crawford, Nebraska, in 2005. However, the tractor had started in Wyoming where it was supposedly used for logging.

Today, that Sixty is on loan to the Earth-moving Legacy Center in Elkader, Iowa. The 38,000-square-foot facility showcases the history of Caterpillar from the 1880s to 1940 and includes a large collection of products from Caterpillar, Holt Manufacturing, and C.L. Best Manufacturing.

“A lot of the Model Sixty tractors were used by county road crews to pull big graders and roadbuilding equipment,” Rees says. “When the counties had no more use for them, some of them went to ranches where they were used to move haystacks and that sort of thing.

“There’s no evidence that any of the crawlers that I have ever had a blade on them,” he adds. “None of the Model Sixties I have were likely intended for farming, either, since the fuel tank on most of them is on the right side,” he adds, noting that the model with the cab has the tank on the rear. “If you bought it for farming, you’d want the tank on the left so you could see the furrow when plowing.”

That doesn’t make them any less of a restoration challenge, though. For example, when Rees started the engine on his most recent Sixty restoration this past winter, he discovered it wouldn’t steer, which required an overhaul of the brakes and clutches. Plus, the sprockets were all leaking oil and the tracks were shot.

“I managed to find another Sixty that had a good set of tracks,” he says. “But when I approached the guy about buying them, he said, ‘Nope, you have to buy the whole tractor.’ Still, I had to take off all the pads and ended up changing everything from 16-inch pads to 20-inch pads.”

In addition to the four Cat Sixty tractors, the Ten, and the Twenty, Rees also has a 16-hp Struck compact crawler and a Cat Forty that came from wheat country in western Nebraska. Unlike the other crawler models, which are all gas-powered, the Forty uses a three-cylinder diesel engine with a pony engine and has wide-gauge tracks for farming.

“The problem with tractors with a pony engine is that if you don’t run them on a regular basis, you end up having more problems with the pony engine than you do the diesel itself,” Rees relates.

Other colors on rubber

Just as most of the family’s Cat tractors come with a story, so do the several wheeled tractors in the collection. While most of them are John Deere models, Rees has an Allis-Chalmers D14 that he restored, a 1950 Ford Jubilee, and a Doodlebug built from Ford Model A parts around the time of World War II.

“The Jubilee belonged to my father-in-law, who in turn had bought it from his father-in-law in Corning, Iowa,” Rees says. “He had me restore it to new condition a year after he bought it in 1993.”

Similarly, the John Deere 730 in Rees’ collection was once owned by his father, who used it to farm 240 acres. The tractor was originally purchased by a farmer in Randolph, Nebraska, at a price of $5,200 for the tractor and a four-bottom plow. Rees says his dad paid $1,250 for it when he bought it used in 1973.

As for the John Deere Model 4010 diesel in the collection, Rees says it is as close as he could get to the model he once used. He says he knows where the actual tractor he owned is located, but the owner doesn’t want to sell it. So he had to make do with a copy. Other John Deere models in the collection besides the 730 diesel and 4010 are a 530, a second 730 (this one a propane model), a 4020 diesel, and a 4055.

“I like to find tractors that came from out West, because they tend to have less rust due to the climate,” he says. “The furthest away Iever found a tractor was the 4020 that came from Twin Falls, Idaho.”

Invaluable help from son

Rees isn’t one to take all the credit on his restorations, though. While he admits he can handle most engine overhauls and mechanical restoration, he’s quick to credit others for sandblasting, painting, and sheet metalwork.

He says he couldn’t handle a lot of projects without the help of D.J., who has been assisting since he was 12 years old. Rees says he even has to give credit to his wife, Cheryl, “for washing all the greasy clothes and spending so many lonely nights in the house.”